Archives for August 2011

This is an enthralling novel about love, imaginings, the borders of sanity and madness and the ultimate triumph of hope. In his sharp depictions of small-town savagery and finely detailed portraits, Hall sweeps the reader away with powerful, breathtaking prose. Love Without Hope (the title comes from the Robert Graves poem of the same name) […]

With the novella Vertigo, award-winning author Amanda Lohrey (The Philosopher’s Doll, Camille’s Bread) once more taps into the Australian zeitgeist. Luke and Anna, 30-something corporate editors living in Sydney’s Glebe, are affected by a familiar convergence of affluenza, crippling mortgages and pollution. They are also linked by a shared tragedy. In pursuit of the ‘rural […]

Tennis star Andre Agassi sets the record straight in a candid autobiography encompassing his public career and his private struggles. “I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.” No would have believed Andre Agassi had he told them this. Yet it […]

This short, beautiful yet devestating memoir gets five stars out of five from me. I read it in one sitting and was mesmerised. It may be short in terms of pages but it is masterful in the scale it encompasses. The story is very simple and is told very simply. Gaberielle Carey’s mother, Joan, aged […]

“Hell to my nerves. If I were dead, I should still fly an aeroplane”. Charles Kingsford-Smith This is the biography of famous Australian aviator, Charles Kingsford Smith, also known as ‘Chilla’ and ‘Smithy’. The foreword is by Charles Kingsford-Smith Jnr. “If any one man typified the Australian character at its best, with all its great […]